Comfort Food

Do you have a “comfort food”?

It might be something from your youth. For example, ThatManILove loves him some New York style hotdog. If you don’t know what this is (for they rarely serve them in West Texas!), it’s a hot dog with mustard, lettuce, tomato, and pickles. No chili. And the only place locally he can get them is (1) at home, when he makes them, and (2) at Der Wienerschnitzel, which is located 20 miles away in Odessa.

For me? It’s Starbucks Venti Chai, no water.

Foodwise? Cornbread, with a little bit of sweet to it. Lordy, I do love me some cornbread. And blackeyed peas, please.

My comfort food used to be Cool Ranch Doritos and a Dr. Pepper. I really thought that was great food for breakfast (oh, yeah...I’m an oilfield gal!). I rarely drink Dr. Pepper now, but I will sneak a Cool Ranch Dorito chip or two!

When Outback came to town (I celebrated that day!), we would always start out a meal with Aussie Cheese Fries. Until I read the calorie count in those puppies a couple of years ago. I couldn’t believe it.

And now, the Aussie Cheese Fries have made the #1 listing in the Men’s Health.com article “The 20 Worst Foods In America” - with a rocking 2900 calories per order.

A Little Bit of Heaven...That Goes Straight To My Butt

My Chai didn’t make it, but it should have, at 300+ calories, and that’s with low-fat milk.

I quit. If you see me going thru the Starbucks drive-thru, feel free to stop me and check me for drinks. And pour them out.

So, what's your comfort food?

Creativity For Hire

We have a referral bonus drive going on at work.

For example, if I refer a person, and they make it through the gauntlet and actually get hired, I get a bonus.

So I did.

Refer a person.

And they got hired.

I’ve received notification, however, that I’m not going to get the bonus.  Because the person that we hired forgot to put my name in the online application form.

I appealed their decision.  Utilizing the logic that (1) the online app is hard and (2) not everyone is going to be able to 1-2-3 navigate that thing as easily as they suppose.

And then, like a good neighbor, I substantiated my claim via PrintScreen.

You see, the person had contacted me after hours, and I didn’t have my computer on me to walk them through “the process.”  

So, I did it via my iPhone, on Facebook Chat.  1-2-3, every step. Included the job website. Told the person exactly what to do.

Oh, yes, I did.

And I had every one of the messages in my FB archive, thankfully, though through zero prior planning on my part.  (Thank you, Facebook!)  And I also happen to have the Print Screen function on my work computer (Thank you, Dell).  And I also happen to know how to copy, paste into an email.  (Thank you, me.)

I ran into the head HR person, in from Houston, yesterday.  She looked at me, and grinned and we laughed about it.  It was the first FB referral she’d seen. 

I said, “Awww, c’mon. You don’t expect someone like me to follow the rules verbatim, do you?  Little Miss Think Outside the Box?”

She told me she was going to have to take it to a higher power.

I thought, “I already did.  God gave me the wisdom to do the Print Screen.  And, send the text to y'all.”

But, I just smiled.

Because, you know....it’s never boring around here.

Read The Instructions, Silly.

Today could have been a gritchy day, but by God’s design, I’m not normally a gritchy person.

A couple of people tried to pull rank on me to get time slots they wanted.  Not once, but twice today.

Really, people?

It didn’t work.  And I still had to be nice and tell them no, sweetly and effectively.

Karma, people.  I don’t know how it really works, but I do know what goes around comes around.

And if you play by the rules, you win. And you go on to bless someone else.  I guess that would be good karma. If you try to manipulate someone, you lose, eventually.  And that? Bad karma.

I hate being manipulated.  It’s a virtually ineffective tactic with me.  I can smell it coming a mile away.  It’s like my antennae shoot up into the sky, vibrating at the least little wave heading my way.

“Warning! Warning!  They’re going to scream and cry and threaten to get what they want.  Danger, danger, Will Robinson!”

And still?  I fall for it.  Until they're about halfway through their spiel, and out it comes..."we do a lot of work with your company"...or "we'll pull our sponsorship"... or....well, you get the drill.  Or, they offer to pay me.  It's a non-profit, dude.  That won't work. I don't get paid to volunteer!

I hate that they don’t get what they want.  There’s something twisted in me that wants everyone to be happy, and I’ll work like hell to make it happen for them.  Ah, well, they’ll get over it. They can get happy in the same pants they got mad in.   If they’d read the instructions, they wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Sweet tiny little rant over.

Thanks for listening. Seriously.  Now I'm going to try to go back to sleep, okay?